Magic Can Be Murder (11 page)

Galvin glanced back at Kirwyn still hovering in the doorway. Then he looked back at her and said, not quite straight-faced, "Yes," for which Nola liked him a little better.

But she still didn't forgive him for carrying her up the stairs.

S
ERGEANT
H
ALIG BOUND
Nola's ankle in cloths soaked in cool rose water. It relieved some of the pain, but an icy stream would have felt even better, Nola remembered the stream by which she had stopped last night, the one near which the farmer had picked her up this morning and to which he had promised to return her—
if she
was waiting for him in the market by noon.

If it wasn't noon yet, it was certainly close. Too close for a lame witch who had miscalculated her own cleverness and luck.

It could be worse,
she told herself.

But she would have to concentrate to think
how,
and she needed to spend her concentration on maintaining her spells.

Nobody had seen the shadowforms in the bucket, she reminded herself. Only Brinna knew she was a witch, and—for the moment—Brinna had no proof of this and no likelihood that anyone would believe whatever she had to say. Not that Nola could let herself relax. She was trapped in a house with four men, none of whom was likely to be any help to her at all: two who, should they begin to suspect she was a witch, had the authority to arrest her; one who was desperate enough co have just killed his father; and one who looked about to get blamed for that killing,
¡t could be worse,
Nola mentally repeated: Halig could be binding her to a stake rather than nursing her swollen ankle, or Kirwyn could be standing in the doorway with a hatchet and a crazed look on his face rather than with the cup of water and bowl Galvin had sent him to fetch and the put-upon expression of one who was used to doing the ordering rather than the fetching. Alan was supposed to be helping Halig, but he was so agitated he seemed to be doing more fluttering than helping.

Galvin took the cup and bowl from Kirwyn and brought them to Nola, which increased the sourness on Kirwyn's face. As Galvin supported her so that she could rinse the taste of vomit from her mouth, Nola couldn't help but smile.

Galvin, of course, caught her at it. "What?" he asked.

Nola shook her head. "An old family story," she explained. "Apparently my mother would get sick every morning while she was carrying me, before I was born. She likes to tell how my father would stroke her hair and sing songs to comfort her. It's one of her sayings: Never underestimate someone who's willing to hold your head while you're being sick."

"Ah, well," Galvin said. He took the bowl she'd used to spic in but left her the cup, which still held water. "I don't sing."

"My mother never said my father sang
well,
" Nola pointed out.

"Your mother sounds like a very sensible woman."

So much for any thought of intelligent conversation with him.

"I'd feel much better if I could ¡ust rest quietly," Nola told everyone, though in truth she wanted them out of there precisely so that she could sit up and pinch herself if she started to get sleepy. With the ache in her ankle a dull throb, she might too easily drift off, and that would be the end of the transforming spell that held her in this form and Brinna in her mother's.

"Rest is the best medicine," Halig agreed.

As the sergeant ushered them out of the room, Galvin said, "So, Alan. Fetch a candle and Halig and I can take a quick look at the root cellar."

Just in time. She'd gotten to the bucket just in time.

"The root cellar?" Kirwyn had stopped moving. "You've already been down there. Surely you remember? Dark room at the foot of the stairs? Brinna tumbling down, you and the sergeant running after, her emptying her stomach practically all over you...?"

Galvin ignored the sarcasm. "We went down there," he said. "We didn't look."

Kirwyn gave a loud sigh.

"Strictly a precaution," Galvin told him. "With Brinna screaming when she discovered your father's body, and you and Alan yelling as you pursued the intruder, the neighbors were alerted very quickly. And yet with all those people opening their doors and hanging out their windows,
nobody
saw anyone run our of your courtyard." Galvin gave a frosty smile. "Only you and Brinna saw any glimpse of an intruder."

"He was fast," Kirwyn protested.

Kirwyn
claimed to have seen the intruder, too? No wonder Galvin was so suspicious; their descriptions probably didn't match.

"Or," Galvin said, "he may have circled around the back and reentered the house through the kitchen door."

This had gone too far for Nola to continue feigning sleepiness. "Why?" she demanded.

"To hide until the commotion moved to the other end of the house. Then, once everyone had given up on pursuit and was gathered around the shop, he could have scrolled out the kitchen door without anyone noticing."

Galvin is definitely too clever for his own good,
Nola thought. He was complicating things even more than she had. Did he really believe this far-fetched theory, or was he trying to catch someone up? And if he was trying to catch someone up, who? She asked, "So that would mean that you're searching for...?"

Galvin made an expansive gesture. "Evidence of his being here. Or perhaps he left the stolen goods hidden somewhere in the house, with the plan of coming back to retrieve them at some later time, when things have calmed. Which, of course, would put all of you in danger. He might even still be here, trapped by the searchers coming back sooner than he anticipated. For all we know, he's in a corner of the root cellar, or in or behind a piece of furniture."

Nola glanced at Halig to see what he made of that notion but couldn't read anything from his face.

If Galvin said too much more, she would have to throw something out of sheer vexation. So Nola closed her eyes to indicate that she was tired and that they should leave.

When she peeked her eyes open, she saw that Galvin, Halig, and Alan had gone, and only Kirwyn remained, lingering in the doorway. She remembered how he'd looked when she'd seen him in the bespelled water before he had killed Innis. He'd been spying in the kitchen window, watching Brinna, and he'd been wearing an expression of venom and malice. Now his expression was only one of irritation. "What the hell are you trying to do, Brinna?" he demanded in a quiet voice, obviously intent on not letting the others hear.

Trying to do?
"I fell," she told him.

He continued to glower.

Pain and the weariness of habitual fear conspired to make her reckless. "I didn't fall intentionally to inconvenience you."

Surprisingly he didn't take offense at her unservant-like brazenness. "Is anything amiss?" he asked.

Everything was. Everything obviously was. Even Kirwyn had to see char. And solicitude didn't suit him. Even his tone of voice was wrong. "No," she said, though she was nor sure what exactly he was asking her.

"Good," he snapped.

"Thank you for your concern," she muttered as he slammed the door shut.

What was
that
all about?

He would bear watching.

But of course she had known
that
already.

She waited until the men's voices and their footsteps faded, then she reached for the cup Galvin had left her. Since this was Brinna's bed, she had no difficulty finding one of Brinna's hairs. Whispering the words that prepared the water, she tossed the hair into the cup.

The magic was not fooled by the transforming spell. Instantly Brinna's shadowform appeared in the water. Looking like Nola's mother, she sat, hudcled and miserable, in the corner of what appeared to be a barn.
Good,
Nola thought, happy not over Brinna's distress but because Brinna was being quiet. And because she was alone. That was safest for both of them. And she had the basket she'd taken marketing, which meant she wouldn't go hungry, even if Nola couldn't get out of the house until after everyone had gone to bed.

Bur Nola hoped she'd have a chance before that. She hoped that Innis was to be buried today—it was, after all, summer—and that she could slip away then.

Lest Brinna get the idea that she was safe just because she was away from Nola's presence, Nola concentrated on the memory of her mother trying to snatch fairies only she could see out of the air. "Damn fairies," her mother would say, "always jeering and poking fun."

In the cup, Brinna's hand jerked and clawed at the air and her lips twitched.

Nola made her do it only twice, just so she wouldn't dare to go to her friends to try to convince them of what had happened. Then Nola plucked the hair out of the cup. There were more to choose from should she decide to check again, and she would never, ever, leave bespelled water about again. She was determined not to complicate the situation any more than she already had.

Galvin was doing enough of that already.

***

A
LAN BROUGHT HER
a meal, proof—if she'd needed any—that she'd lost any possibility of returning to the farmer's market stall in time for him to return her to the road to Saint Erim Turi.

"What's happening?" Nola asked.

"Much coming and going," Alan replied. "Lord Pendaran's men searched the house, the shop, and the grounds. They've questioned neighbors." Alan shrugged, possibly indicating he considered much of this a waste of time—which it would have been had Innis really been killed by an intruder.

"And Kirwyn?" Nola asked.

"Accepting the condolences of all ... as well as accepting a few work orders." No need of brilliant deduction to guess what Alan thought of
that
unseemly haste to return to business.

Trying to get more information, Nola said, "That Lord Galvin, he makes my head spin."

"Well, yes," Alan said, "he does seem to have that effect on quite a few of the young women."

"No." Nola felt her face go red. "I mean with all his theories, all his questions." She was sure Alan didn't believe her.
Serves you right,
she told herself,
after making it so no one believes Brinna.
She went on, "He got me so muddled, I couldn't remember what I'd told him before. I couldn't remember what I'd
seen
before."

Alan patted her hand sympathetically. "And the knock on your head won't be helping any."

"Exactly," Nola agreed. She didn't need sympathy; she needed to know what had happened last night after she stopped watching in the bespelled water basin. "I remember being in the kitchen when I heard Master Innis cry out." She paused and hugged herself as though too distressed to continue, in case Alan would correct her and say that previously she had claimed it was the thud of the strongbox falling that had alerted her that something was wrong.

Alan didn't correct her.

"And I remember running down the hallway, where you joined me because you were coming from..." She reached for her cup and took a drink of water.

"My room," Alan finished for her, which was some of the information she'd been hoping to uncover.

She nodded, pretending he was saying something she already knew. "Then," she continued—Alan had already indicated this in front of Galvin—"I opened the door—"

Alan interrupted with another detail. "Because I was slower, being already asleep when the cry awoke me..."

Again Nola nodded. "And I saw ... I
think
I saw ... a glimpse of him. The one who did it."

Alan didn't say anything, because apparently Brinna had said no such thing last night.

"I shouldn't have said anything to Galvin," Nola said, "because I'm not sure. Maybe people talked me into it, with all their questions." She tested out that explanation, and Alan seemed to find it reasonable, but that was no assurance Galvin had.

"Maybe you saw his shadow," Alan said, a compromise between "I saw him" and "I didn't see him."

"Maybe," Nola agreed. "But, you know, after that everything seems confused."

"Everything
was
confused after that." Alan was just too agreeable. But then he continued, "Neighbors shouting and pursuing each other, everybody with opinions and advice, the baker's w:fe coming to help and then fainting..."

Galvin had mentioned something about Brinna screaming and Kirwyn and Alan pursuing. Nola said, "So while I was busy screaming, you and Kirwyn went chasing after the intruder..."

"See, you do remember," Alan said.

"And ... What direction, again, did Kirwyn come from? Was he behind you in the hall?" That would have made sense if Kirwyn had run out of the shop and circled around the house, entering through the kitchen so that he, too, could say that he had been asleep in his own room. This would have given him the opportunity to throw the money he had stolen from his fathers strongbox into his room, to hide more carefully later.

But where
had
he hidden it, if Galvin and Halig had searched the house and been unable to find it?

None of this made any difference, for Alan was shaking his head. "No, Kirwyn came around from the outside, thinking to cut him off."

That meant he must have dropped or quickly stowed the stolen money outside. And yet none of the neighbors who had swarmed into the courtyard to see what was happening last night had come across it. Nor had Galvin and Halig today. And what chance had Kirwyn had to remove it to a safer place? Nola tried to picture the outside of the house, the courtyard. Surely Galvin and Halig would have had the sense to look into the well. And to check both the well and the outside of the house for loose stones behind which a treasure could be hidden. It couldn't have been a very complicated hiding place, because there was so little time for Kirwyn both to have scooped the money out of the strongbox
and
to have hidden it....

Leave thai hunt to the men,
Nola told herself.

And yet maybe it was important. Maybe
where
the money was hidden could in some way point Galvin and Halig to
who
had hidden it. Though she couldn't help but wonder
why
Kirwyn had stolen at all—when in the end, as Innis's only son, Kirwyn would get everything anyway.